Matchstick Streaming Stick

Back in September, 2014 I backed the Matchstick Kickstarter. The original promise of the creators was to have a completely open source hardware and software HDMI streaming dongle. If you are at all familiar with the Google Chromecast, the Matchstick was to have a comparable feature set. In addition to the default streaming capabilities, the Matchstick was supposed to have the capability to have ad-hoc streaming.

The fundraising campaign was a huge success. Over $470k was raised for a goal of $100k. Everything seemed to be going well. Unfortunately, things started going downhill when the actual rewards were supposed to be delivered. I was one of the lucky few; I received one of the few developer units. Others were not so lucky. As of August, the creators decided to refund the backer's funds. Since then it appears all further development has halted.

Up to this point I hadn't done much with the Matchstick other than to load the latest firmware. This weekend I decided to see what I could do to get the device up and running. Unfortunately, it appears that the domain http://matchstick.tv is no longer in existence so all the documentation on the developer's website is only available through the web archive. I'm going to try and document everything I find and the process necessary to get the Matchstick up and running here.